Hawking is gone. Today, everyone is commemorating him. When it comes to commemorating a scientist, beyond reposting pictures in their memory on social media, something more meaningful might be learning a little more, within our own abilities, about that scientist’s academic contributions—and a little more about their field of research and the important academic achievements in their discipline.
This is especially true for a scientist like Hawking, who devoted his entire life to science outreach: the widespread sharing of scientific facts and the spirit of science was what he pursued throughout his life. Learning a little more about what Hawking and the other physicists who explored the world alongside him did and discovered may be the best way to bring comfort to his spirit.
If we laypeople with no background in physics can’t make sense of the actual equations or grasp the details of the theories, then let’s read some popular physics books and watch some popular science documentaries.
Hawking’s own popular physics books are already widely read, so there’s no need for me to recommend them again. But since Hawking’s main theoretical contributions lie in cosmic-scale areas such as theories of gravity and black holes, let me recommend a documentary that’s at least somewhat related—
The National Geographic astronomy documentary Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. You can watch it on Youku.
It’s a vast, breathtakingly beautiful documentary that can leave you gasping. Miss it, and you may regret it for the rest of your life ^_^
Even my three-year-old daughter watched it without blinking!
p.s.：
The narrator and presenter in the film is the renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Last year, he published a hugely bestselling popular science book called Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. The Chinese edition should be coming out soon.
Note
- This series of articles, “Psychology: New Knowledge in Short Lessons,” was written back then as a collection of short popular science pieces and casual essays related to Psychology: New Knowledge with Zhichao Wei. They were published on the now-shuttered platform Fàntuán, and the original links no longer exist.
Leave a Reply